


not suited to the cold

by afewreelthoughts



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 09:01:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20240254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/pseuds/afewreelthoughts
Summary: Margaery has found her way North, and Sansa wants to trust her... but wanting is sometimes not enough.





	not suited to the cold

**Author's Note:**

> written for the prompt "things you said with no space between us" on tumblr.
> 
> I own nothing and make no money from this. Everything belongs to George R.R. Martin.

She appears that night in Sansa’s room, furs wrapped around her shoulders, soft curls a crown in the light from the fire.

“Are you well, Margaery?” Sansa asks.

She smiles. “I’m cold.” Then shrugs. “I don’t do well in winter, I suppose.” The furs dip down.

Sansa swallows. “Are your rooms not warm enough?”

Margaery holds her hands out towards the fire. Her face glows yellow, then bronze and orange in the light. She shakes her head, too gently not to be calculated. “May I stay? It’s warmer in here. I don’t know why.”

When Margaery had washed up North, appearing among the petitioners in Winterfell, Sansa felt her heart fall through the floor. She deflected it with a smile. "Who comes North in winter?”

“King’s Landing is ash, Your Grace” Margaery said, her eyes on the floor, her hair held back in a thick braid. Sansa had never seen it arranged so simply before. “I took the first ship I could, and it led me here.”

“It’s_all_ash?” Sansa asked. She imagined the delicate spires of the Red Keep crumbling to dust, remembered the noble ladies crowded in terror as they awaited either the wrath of Stannis Baratheon or Ilyn Payne’s axe. 

Margaery’s words should not have come as a surprise. Bran had said as much, when Sansa wondered aloud whether they should be traveling South to escape the Winter. He said that he could not see what exactly had happened there, but that refugees would be pouring North, and that they would be safer within the walls of Winterfell.

“What should we do to help them?” The past years had brought little to Westeros but death, teaching its people how to flee it in all its forms. It came for them from the east and the west and the south, and it was coming from the North.

“We can’t help them all,” Bran said, she had asked her brother, who still appeared small to her, his young face framing ancient eyes. “We’re best off staying here. Until Jon returns.“

_Until Jon returns. _It seemed like a lifetime would pass before then.

Sansa shifts beneath the bedclothes. "If you would like this room, you may have it.”

Margaery’s mouth turns into a small “o” in surprise. “I don’t mean to bother you, I can go.”

The furs shift farther down her shoulders, and she looks up at Sansa from beneath her lashes. 

Sansa sees Margaery as if from a great distance, translating her every motion, her every word, and reading the thought behind it far too easily. Sansa knows this routine well, was taught carefully her whole life how to love and to please, and seeing it all directed back at her makes her want to scream. Margaery always appealed to the people with power. _Is this the sort of woman I might have become? _Sansa wonders. _If I had stayed with Petyr? If I had never left King’s Landing? _If a thousand things…

Sansa supposes that she should take Margaery’s attentions as a compliment. She doesn’t.

“It’s just so warm in here,” Margaery says, “and my room is so cold.”

The lie stings.

_Say that you’re lonely_, Sansa closes her eyes and begs, _that you’re scared, that you want me. Say something true, something I could possibly believe. _

Margaery sighs. “I’ll go, Your Grace. Thank you for letting me in.”

She turns for the door.

"You don’t have to please me, you know?” Sansa says. “Please know I haven’t asked you to.”

Margaery stops. “Would you prefer I didn’t please you?”

“I would prefer you did as you pleased.”

She pulls the furs tighter around her shoulders. “And if I don’t know what that is…”

Sansa feels her resolve slipping away. “You may stay if you like. I don’t think I’ll sleep much tonight.”

Margaery’s face glows with a light all its own when she turns around. “You know I’ve missed you, don’t you?” She nearly races across the room to perch on the edge of the giant bed. “Hurting you was never what I meant. I pleaded with grandmama to keep the match with Willas, even after everything.”

“Please stop.”

“And I knew they had _something _planned for Joffrey, but it wasn’t in my hands, and I wasn’t thinking of what blaming Tyrion might do to – ” 

_“Stop.”_

Margaery draws back at the sound of her voice, and Sansa feels half triumph and half disgust at herself. “You are safe here.” She forces her voice to remain calm, gentle. “You do not need to… to… _seduce_me to keep your head on your shoulders.”

The hurt on Margaery’s soft face slowly shifts into confusion then, miraculous, a smile emerges. “You think I’m seducing you?”

“You are,” Sansa says, “You _do_, that’s _what you do_.” Her hands fist in the covers.

“Are you angry with me?”

“I’m angry that you think I don’t know you.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m angry that you’re playing games with me.” She draws the covers tighter across her lap.

“Playing games with you?”

“Finding the most powerful person in the room, then inching your way closer to them without them realizing it…”

Margaery leans across the bed towards her, and Sansa realizes she is almost whispering.

“But I _do _realize it, I _do _see it. So just tell me what you want.” 

Margaery looks down and bites her lip, as if searching for something to say. She is close enough now that Sansa can smell the floral scent she’s wearing – a delicate, unlikely thing to have saved from the end of the world.

“I don’t know.”

“What?” Sansa realizes she has drifted away; her thoughts do that more often these days.

“I don’t know why I’m so drawn to you.” Margaery shakes her head. “You’re right, I might just be clinging to you to feel safe somehow, but if you knew what had happened when you left King’s Landing, you would not blame me.”

Something feral crosses her dark eyes for a moment, and the sight of it makes Sansa want to reach for her like nothing else.

Margaery must sense that, because she smiles. “Or perhaps they were right, and all I want is to trap an innocent in my thorns.”

_Who are they? _The words hover on her tongue. Sansa feels her legs shaking. Not even in the icy blue that has descended on Winterfell has she felt cold enough to tremble like this. Why would her legs be shaking?

Margaery reaches across the space between them to brush Sansa’s hair from her face. Her fingertips are warm on Sansa’s cheek, and that warmth overcomes everything Sansa has been putting in its way.

Sansa tangles her hands in Margaery’s hair and pulls her close. Her furs fall away, and they are tangled in the bedclothes as much as each other until Sansa tears the sheet away.

Red lips on her throat, on her wrists, on her wool nightdress, Sansa runs one hand down Margaery’s back beneath her loose-fitting gown. Their legs twine together.

“Thank you… for coming here,” Sansa whispers, and with it, she feels a weight lifting from her chest.

“I’ve missed you…” Margaery murmurs against the swell of her breast “…my queen.”


End file.
